Chocolate Covered Rocket Science
by VistrosV
Summary: Four friends are found at a school dance, with everything going as completely dull and normal as alway. But, whenever a strange man in a blue box appears and gives them a potential capability to go into any fantasy of their choosing, new doors of possibilities are suddenly opened to them. Follow this small group as they advance on their adventure through their own imaginations.
1. Chapter 1: Four

"So…"

The beautiful girl turned her head to look at the voice. "So, what?", she asked, as though she was entirely entertained by just standing in awkward silence.

"Well-"

"Oh my gosh, guys! I forgot how many balloons they have at homecoming!" Jonathon quickly picked one up off of the ground, hit both Mikey and Stephanie on the head with it, making odd sound effects, and strutted away. Mikey and Stephanie just stood there and laughed at his charming awkwardness, not knowing how they could ever live without him. Mikey turned to Stephanie, with the freshly thinned air, and decided to ask her to dance. As she said yes, they caught a glimpse of Jonathon running around bopping everyone that he knew on the head.

"How long have we been dating now? What, like, two months?" asked Mikey.

"That sounds about right. Though, honestly, I'm not feeling much growing in our relationship. In fact, I've wanted to talk to you lately about that."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I just don't feel as though our relationship is moving forward as I wish that it was."

Mikey suddenly slowed down his dancing, and started moving off of the dance floor. "I suppose that I can respect that," he said, trying hard not to look as though he was deeply hurt, in attempt to spare Stephanie. "I mean, if one of us isn't pleased with the relationship, then that's not really much of a relationship, is it?"

"You don't know how happy it makes me to know that you actually understand it from my perspective." she grinned. "However, I don't want this to in any way tamper with our friendship at all, because you are still a great guy."

"No, of course not. What do you think, I'm gonna hold a grudge against you from this day forward? As if!" Mikey chuckled, in an attempt to cover his true feelings.

"Well, either way, I'm still happy that I don't have to force this. Thank you so much." She paused and turned to look around. "Well, I'm going to go talk to Hannah. Bye!"

"See ya' later" Mikey said as she turned to walk away. He just stood still and watched her as she strutted away, her gorgeously curled hair bouncing off of the back of her charcoal black dress with every step.

Mikey looked down at the ground, and to his surprise, saw five balloons roll under his legs. He looked back to see Jonathon up to his usual antics. He was just standing there holding a bundle of balloons, trying to look completely innocent with his big cheesy grin. Mikey couldn't help but to smile at him.

"Dude… I got as many balloons as I could carry. Here, hold these while I go get some more." Jonathon shoved an armful of balloons toward Mikey and ran off.

Mikey dropped all the balloons and walked off to find somebody to talk to. He quickly came across a close friend of his over in the corner. "Hey Mariah", said Mikey.

"Oh, hey. How're you doing?" Mariah asked.

"Fine I guess. You know, apart from just getting dumped…"

Mariah's eyes widened in slight surprise. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know."

"No it's okay, I didn't really expect it either. I mean, yeah I'm upset, but I'm not going to let it bother me that much."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, I just need to let it sink in."

Suddenly, Jonathon stormed over in a comical fit of rage. "Man, I thought that I told you to hold my balloons!" Even he couldn't keep from smiling. "I mean, how hard is that? 'Hold. These. Balloons.' That's not a hard concept!" Still smiling he shoved the balloons he was carrying into Mikey's arms, and then bent down to pick up the ones that he dropped to give to Mariah.

While he gathered all the balloons that Mariah refused to hold and kept dropping, Hannah found her way over to them. "Are you okay, Mikey?" she asked.

"Yes I'm fine."

"Well from what Stephanie told me, you took it very well. I mean, at least you didn't go psychotic and plan to murder her or anything." She let out a shrill laugh that quickly died out due to awkwardness. None of them seemed to be too weirded out by it, being completely accustom to her odd humor.

"Yeah, at least I didn't do that…"

They all just stood there for a few seconds, while Hannah tried to break the silence by saying how awkward the silence was.

As Jonathon began listing off reasons that Hannah's tactics were completely pointless, Mikey just started looking around. Mariah zoned out completely to avoid listening to another one of Jonathon's rants, and Hannah tried arguing with Jonathon without giving any valid points to support her side of the argument.

As Mikey began looking around for nothing in particular, his eyes landed outside. It was dark outside, but he thought that he saw something shift in the darkness. He took a step toward the glass door to get a better look. He kept moving forward until his nose was nearly touching the glass, just trying to make out a small, black rectangle blotch in the distance.

Next thing that he knew, the door opened, and a long-haired man came in from outside and started making his way past Mikey. "What year is this?" he asked.

"What?" Mikey said

"What, are you deaf?" He reached forward to tap Mikey on the forehead. "What year is this?"

Mikey felt as though he knew the strange man. "Um, 2013."

"Ah, wow, pretty early on, then." He raised his eyebrows, gave Mikey a charming smile, and ran off, giving his suspenders a snap as he went.

The realization of who the man was hit Mikey like a sack of flour. He quickly ran back to his small cluster of friends in a slight daze of disbelief. Jonathon was still trying to tell Hannah off for her invalid arguments.

"Guys, I think that I just saw-"

Suddenly a giant flash of light came through the glass dome above. Mikey looked over to see Jonathon's face light up with glee. Mikey couldn't help but get a bit excited too, especially knowing that the Doctor was nearby, who knew what kind of adventure was coming?

"Don't worry guys, I've got this", said Jonathon. He reached into his brown jacket to pull out his eleventh doctor sonic screwdriver, though made of plastic, he loved it dearly.

"Wow, you brought your screwdriver?" asked Mikey.

"Did you not?"

"No, don't get me wrong, I did." Mikey reached into his pocket to pull out his tenth doctor sonic screwdriver, and flourished it a bit. "Why would I not?"

"Everybody, please stay calm, I can't work with too much noise! But just to be safe, please try to stay out of the light!" The Doctor was standing on what seemed to be the DJ's table in the center of the room, yelling commands at all the frazzled teens.

Everyone just stood still, and some stared at the light in awe. Others were asking why they should trust this random stranger.

Having too many of these types of questions to address each one individually, he just shouted out, "Okay, fine, so long as you don't mind the radiation poisoning!" With this, he smiled a bit at his own manipulative lie.

As everyone scampered out of the light as fast as possible, the Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and began taking readings from the light source above.

Jonathon ran forward with eyes as big as billiard's balls in joy of seeing his fictional hero come to life. Mikey reached forward to try to stop him, but he was too fast. Mikey ran after him in fear of him getting in trouble. When they reached the Doctor, Mikey looked back to see that Mariah and Hannah had the same idea, and had followed them too.

"So, what's wrong? How can I help?" asked Jonathon.

The Doctor looked down and saw Jonathon staring at him in pure glee. The Doctor rolled his eyes and said, "Great! I should have known that I'd have a fan club in this blasted school. It's getting to where this dimension isn't worth saving."

"What do you mean?" asked Jonathon. "I just want to help, and it doesn't look like you have an assistant right now, so how about it?"

The Doctor looked at him in disbelief and said, "Yeah, you and the rest of humanity. I mean, what's up with that, I say, 'Stay back', and you all are like, 'How can I help?' How about by staying back?" He continued tampering with the settings on his sonic screwdriver until it turned bright yellow. "Yeah! There's that red setting!"

To this, Mariah jumped in and asked, "Aren't red settings supposed to be, well, red?"

"Yeah, weird, right? Apparently in this dimension the red setting is yellow, don't really know why, but 'yellow setting' isn't nearly as catchy, don't you think?" He turned to accept our view on the matter, then suddenly snapped, "Didn't I tell you to get somewhere safe?"

"Well," said Hannah, "from prior events, it seems like the safest place to be is as close to you as possible."

The Doctor looked blankly at us while still tampering with his screwdriver. "Look, I understand that humans here have a strange amount of information about me, and I appreciate all the attempts to help, but I really don't need it." His screwdriver let off a high pitch buzzing and began flashing. "Ah! There we go!" He reached into his jacket to pull out what looked like a blender the size of a light bulb, and set it on the ground. He pointed his screwdriver at it and it began to spark a flurry of colors.

The light above started getting dimmer and dimmer until it finally just went out all together. The Doctor gathered up his items and went around shaking each of our hands in turn. "Well," he said, "it has definitely been nice knowing you all, but I'm afraid that I must go now." He turned to leave when Jonathon grabbed his arm.

"You can't just leave." Jonathon said.

The Doctor pulled his arm away. "Yes, I can, and I can't see you convincing me to stay any time soon." He turned and continued to leave. Jonathon wasn't about to give up that fast. He followed the Doctor, causing the others to follow as well.

They ended up outside and followed him until they all reached his TARDIS. He spun around and looked at them, moving from one face to the other. "Okay, here's the deal, no you cannot be my assistant, no you cannot come into the TARDIS, no I will not say 'bowties are cool' for you, and yes my fez originally belonged to Albert Einstein."

"But we weren't going to ask you any of that." said Mariah.

"Well, I was…" said Jonathon, as Mikey nodded sadly in agreement.

"Anyway, Why and how are you here? And what was that back there?" asked Hannah.

"Why am I here? Well, I haven't been asked that one yet. In fact, why haven't I been asked that yet? That is a perfectly reasonable question."

"So?" asked Mariah, "Why are you here?"

"Well, it's an odd story, actually. You see, apparently in this dimension, you have a television program of all of my adventures, is that right?"

"I guess, yeah" said Mikey.

"Well, in that dimension, the one that you all view, I accomplished my over all goal of saving people from dire situations. I did this to the point of boring myself with lack of adventure. This didn't take long to bore me, you know, four to five minutes. Anyway, I got a message from somebody who claimed to be me in the future, in this dimension. It told me to leave my dimension and come here. Well, I came here and saw this beautiful, yet nearly doomed, race. I simply assume that my job here is the same back home, so I'm here to help."

"Well, that explains why you're here." said Mikey.

"Yes, I quickly found out that I am famous here, which is not fitting my fancy much."

"So, you just left everybody behind?" asked Jonathon.

"Well…" He choked out, "everybody I knew and cared for died, and it was all my fault."

"Everybody?" Hannah asked, "I'm so sorry…"

"It's okay, because now I have a whole new dimension to explore, and more people to meet." The Doctor grinned, though he could not hide the pain behind his eyes.

"So," asked Mariah, "what was that back there?"

"That" said the Doctor, "was a temporal rift. I located it, and was using it to give my TARDIS a fresh kick of power, but my meters told me that it was getting out of control, so I grabbed what I needed, and came to fix the problem."

"How'd you get here?" asked Jonathon. "I mean, I know the TARDIS can come here, but isn't it hard to do that and keep the TARDIS stable?"

"Yes, that is why I used this!" He held up his wrist. He was wearing a watch that looked like the one that belonged to Captain Jack. "If you rig this thing up right, it can jump you to any dimension that you can easily conceive. And, for me, that's virtually infinite, with my experience. Here, take a look." He tossed it to Jonathon.

Jonathon looked the watch over with envy. "You can actually have that." said the Doctor. "I made quite a few more before coming to this dimension, expecting some friends to join me, before something unexpected came up. Not to mention that I'm pretty sure that primitive human minds can't work it. No offense, of course."

"No," Jonathon stammered out, his eyes huge. "It's fine. I can really have this?"

"Well, yes. I wasn't joking." the Doctor smiled toward Jonathon's glee.

"Well, can we have one, if you apparently have plenty?" Mikey asked.

"Sure, I guess, as long as you all promise not to chase me anymore, or sell this technology on eBay, or whatever you use in this time." He went into his TARDIS to get them. When he came back, he opened the door and let a beautiful golden glow flow out, right before he closed the door. "Here ya' go." he said, passing the alien tech around like cheap merchandise.

"Well," the Doctor said, "I have to go now, don't get yourselves into too much trouble." He turned on the spot and went back inside his TARDIS.

Everyone just stood there and watched as the ancient, yet advanced, technologies slowly vanish. The calming noise gradually turned to whispers in the night.


	2. Chapter 2: Watch

"I really don't know what to think about this." Mikey said. "I mean, did it all really happen?"

The four friends had all decided to go to the local Applebee's after homecoming. It was karaoke night tonight, just like every Friday night, and they were all enjoying watching people make fools of themselves, with the occasional occurrence of talent. And, in Jonathon's case, making a fool of himself willfully and purposefully for the sake of entertainment.

"Oh, you mean that whole, 'meeting the Doctor in real life' thing?" Mariah questioned. "No, that was just a figment of your imagination, and I can recall it for no explainable reason." She just looked at Mikey in spite, with her head cocked in a 'did you really just ask that?' kind of way.

"Well I'm sorry if it is a bit difficult for me to process this unreal event!" Mikey snapped.

Jonathon just sat across from Hannah, shifting the watch between his hands in amazement. "Can you believe that we have devices that are potential time machines? I mean, after centuries of research, we just get it handed over to us by a mad man in a box." He chuckled a bit at his own reference.

"Yeah, but not only that, it can jump between dimensions, too? That's insane. I mean… Just wow." Mikey said.

"What's this mean?" asked Hannah. When they looked over, they saw her pointing to a number dial that said "CHANNEL" beside it. They each looked at their watches to see if they all had the same thing. After checking, they realized that they all did indeed have a Channel dial, but they were all set to different things. Hannah's was set to 14, Mikey's: 21, Jonathon's: 15, Mariah's: 17.

"What do you think that they mean?" asked Mariah.

"Well that would be the question, wouldn't it?" Mikey retorted with a small smile to keep they're constant feud going. Mariah just looked at him with a sneer, and nodded slightly as if to say, 'oh, you're asking for it.'

"Channel…" Jonathon thought, "Like, a walkie-talkie?"

"Maybe." Said Hannah.

"Well," said Jonathon, "If it is, I think that we should all set it to the same number, just to be safe. Any suggestions? It goes up to 99, so-"

"Didn't the Doctor say that it wouldn't work anyway?" asked Mariah. "Why are we even worrying about this?"

"That's not what he said." Said Mikey. "He said that he was 'pretty sure' that it wouldn't work." Everyone could hear the hope spilling out of his mouth.

"Yeah, it's always potential that it could work." Said Jonathon. "So, any number suggestions?"

"Yeah," said Mikey, "how about 42?"

Jonathon seemed to like the number and what it referenced. As for Mariah, she got it, and as soon as she did, she rolled her eyes in utter disbelief that these were the kind of people that she chose to hang out with. Nobody could really tell whether Hannah got it or not, seeing as how she just sat still with no reaction.

They all took the time to set their watch's channels to 42.

"So, how did he say that this works?" asked Hannah.

"Well," Jonathon said, "he kind of said that you can jump to any dimension that you can think of, right? So I'm guessing that it works telepathically, like most of the Doctor's toys do. And seeing as how there is only one button on this thing, I would say that you just press that to activate it. It does look like there used to be two buttons here like arrow keys, but they've been removed. He did leave the small display screen, though. Maybe it could be made into a time machine again if he wanted to."

"What, yours doesn't have this pair of arrow keys?" Asked Mariah. "Mine does."

Jonathon reached across the table, like he was catching somebody running away with his wallet, to rip the watch out of Mariah's hand.

"What?! Why would he leave the time travel feature on one, but not the rest?" Jonathon wondered.

"I don't know," said Mariah, reaching back across the table to get her watch back from Jonathon, "but I do know that this is mine, and you shouldn't take things that aren't yours." She fastened the watch back on her wrist.

"So," Hannah said, "Doesn't anybody want to try it out? Or, am I the only one?"

"Do we really know if it's safe or not?" Asked Mariah.

"Well," said Mikey, "I don't think that the Doctor would give us anything particularly dangerous, would you?"

"Even if we were to try it, where would we try to go?" Asked Jonathon.

"Well, what dimensions are there to choose from?" Asked Hannah.

"To choose from?" Asked Mikey. "What do you mean by choose from? The Doctor himself made the point that there are infinite dimensions, which literally means anything."

"Exactly," Jonathon chimed in, "Absolutely anything that you can come up with, no matter how impossible, exists in not just one, but infinite other dimensions. A good example of this is to say, any TV show or book that you can think of has a dimension that you can go to and visit. And if you want to get detailed, each of those doesn't just have one dimension like it, but infinite like it. Crazy, but awesome."

"So," Mariah said, "We can go into any fantasy that we want to with the click of a button."

"In theory", said Mikey, "but, as the Doctor said, we shouldn't be able to do this as humans, but who really knows?"

"Okay, let's do this, then." Said Hannah.

"Well, let's all agree on a place to try to go, first." Said Jonathon.

"It didn't work." Said Mariah.

Everyone turned to look at her. "What do you mean that it didn't work?" Asked Mikey.

"What does it sound like it means?" Snapped Mariah.

"You tried it?" Asked Jonathon.

"No," said Mariah, "My phone didn't work… Yes I tried it!"

"I wonder why it didn't work." Said Mikey.

"So, all this is, is alien junk." Jonathon said. "You know, I legitimately had convinced myself that it would work. I still kind of do." He moved his hand toward the button on his watch.

"I honestly never thought that it would." Mariah said as Jonathon made contact with the button on his watch.

The moment that Jonathon pressed the button on his watch, everyone felt as though they had been lifted up onto a platform. Everything went black to where nobody could see anything, not even each other. It felt as though the platform were being pulled in a direction they couldn't fully comprehend. Next thing that they new, it felt as though the floor beneath them had vanished, and they fell a few feet, back into the light.

They all stood up, after the shock of landing on a cold, metallic floor. As they looked around, they tried to deduce exactly where they ended up.

"Where exactly did you send us, Jonathon?" Asked Mikey.

"Well, the whole 'us being limited to the dimensions that we are aware of, and thus, exist to us' thing made me think of how DC comics have a number of dimensions that they've discovered." Said Jonathon.

"So, you sent us into the DC universe", Mariah said in disbelief.

"Well, I-" Jonathon started.

Alarms suddenly started whaling, and the room went completely red with bright lights. Small, what seemed like, patrol robots seemed to pour out of every corner of the room. They were surrounded in less than a minute, and then the unbelievable happened.

A massive door on the other side of the room opened and a few people walked, or floated in.

As the four intruders looked over, they began to make out some of the figures.

Batman and Wonder Woman appeared to stand to the sides of the most mind-blowing character of all.

"What seems to be the problem, here?" Said Superman.


	3. Chapter 3: Heros

"Oh. My. Gosh." Jonathon slowly got up. He stated to take a step toward his favorite superhero in all of time and space. Superman took a step back in slight surprise that somebody would ever attempt such a thing. Before Jonathon could take another step, all of the droids started focusing in on solely Jonathon, and a couple fired warning shots toward his feet.

"Why are you here, and how did you get here? This tower is secured to where a god would have trouble getting in." Superman speculated.

Mikey opened his mouth to speak, "Well, you see-"

"Wait, so… that's actually Batman. Like, he's real?" Asked Hannah. "And, Superman, with laser vision and everything?"

"It's heat vision, not laser vision." Corrected Jonathon. "But, yeah, that's him."

"But," Mariah stammered, "How is that possible, I mean, they're nothing more than pictures in a comic book, or an actor on a screen. They're not real."

"Please try to keep up." Mikey stabbed. "Everything is real now, there being infinite dimensions, there are infinite possibilities, making literally nothing impossible. Get it?"

Hannah looked at the heroes in disbelief, "Wow…. So, you're saying-"

"You all clearly have a lot of catching up to do," Batman cut in, "but if you don't mind, we need answers. Now."

"Yes, of course." Jonathon said, straightening up. "We're so sorry, it's just that I didn't think that my first meet up with my life long hero would go this poorly. So, you are all familiar with dimensions, yes?" He looked around to see everyone nodding, yet with slight doubt in their faces. "Yes, well, you see… We are from another dimension, almost infinitely similar to one you should all be accustom to. Though, almost the same, my guess is that it's not the same one."

"So your from a dimension like one that we know about, but not exactly the same?" Wonder Woman asked.

"Yes," answered Mikey, "to be more specific, one with humans that have absolutely no superpowers or superheroes."

"Well, that would explain quite a bit." Batman said. "But why here? Why this dimension? And how?"

"I think it just has something to do with this dimension being like the one that's in Jonathon's comic books, and him thinking about his comic books at the time when he jumped us." Mariah deducted.

"That's exactly why." Said Mikey. "And not only is this 'like' the comic books, this is identical, all the way down to the naive government."

"So, the authors of those comic books were writing about this dimension while they were writing the comics?" Asked Hannah.

"No." Mikey quickly corrected her. "They were just writing out of their imagination, and it just happened to be real. Though, it wasn't much of a coincidence, seeing as how everything is real, when it comes to dimensions. You can literally sit down and write anything, and it will be real, 100% guarantee."

"And," Jonathon added, making more of a point to his friends than the heroes, "I wasn't really thinking of any one DC comic series, so I think this is just the DC multiverse in general, which is actually rather convenient. Anyway, the way we got here was with these." He held up his arm to show his watch off. "An alien friend from another dimension gave them to us, thinking that we wouldn't be able to work them, but as you can see, we could. I'm guessing that it has something to do with believing that we actually could."

"So," said Superman, "they work on faith?"

"We are assuming that, yes. But, we can't really tell you for sure." Mikey clarified.

"Well, I think that it's pretty clear what we should do here." Batman said, in an attempt to close up this long conversation.

The three heroes looked at each other, said some things to where the group of friends could not hear them, and then all nodded in agreement. Batman walked up to Jonathon and stuck his hand out.

"What?" Jonathon asked.

"The watch." Batman answered in a stern voice.

"Are you crazy? That's our only way home!" Yelled Mariah.

Then, Hannah came to a stern realization, "Yeah, besides, what's stopping us from going home right now?" She moved he finger onto the button on her watch in panic. She pressed the button and nothing happened. "What? Why didn't that work?"

Batman pointed at the droids. "These droids aren't just for decoration. They block all electronic signals tuned to any frequency but the one that I use. So, to answer your question, that is what's keeping you here."

"Okay," Mikey said, "so you want us to just hand our only way back home over to you? What will that solve?"

"If what you tell us is true," Wonder Woman cut in, "then we will make a point to give the watches back completely undamaged and functional. However, if you prove not to be trusted, and to have lied, then I suppose that these won't serve much use anyway. This is being rather generous seeing as how we have no real reason to trust you."

"So, in what way can we prove that we're not evil, or anything?" Asked Jonathon.

"Yeah," Mariah jumped in, "what if we told you all of your secret identities?" And before they could object, she turned to each one in turn, "Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, and Diana Prince."

"I'm afraid that won't be enough." Batman said, slightly taken aback. "You see, our identities aren't exactly as perfectly secure as they used to be, you all could still be working for somebody."

All of the teens looked downcast at this news.

"You know," Superman said, "a good place to start gaining our trust would be by handing over the watches without further protest."

"Yeah… Okay." Jonathon walked over to Batman and handed over his watch. The rest of the friends followed suit, though hesitant, they knew that it was what had to be done.

"Okay," Batman said, "we will need to keep tabs on you all, and can't just let you go wandering around our dimension causing a lack of balance, so we will watch over you here. I assume that the best path of pursuit is to have each of you be assigned to a member of the team. If you prove trustworthy to that particular individual, more than likely they will train you, because it does look like you all need it in some way, anyway. If you continue to improve, we will probably take you into the field when we view you well prepared, to see if you are just as trustworthy there. The field after all, is the ultimate trust testing ground."

Jonathon and Mikey's faces lit up with pure glee. They both began shaking with excitement. "So," Mikey stammered out, "You mean I actually get to be trained by the Batman. The actual, real Batman?!"

"Well," Batman opened his mouth, "I didn't specify-"

"Oh, come on Bruce." Superman smiled. "Give the kid a chance, the other boy seems more pulled toward me, anyway."

Jonathon started shaking out of control. "Oh my gosh! Really?! I'm getting teamed up with Superman?!"

"Yes." Superman grinned. "It's about time that I'm appreciated around here. So, which one do you want Diana? Whichever one that you don't choose, we'll just assign to Hawkgirl."

"Well," Wonder Woman considered, "knowing Hawkgirl's attitude, her and the black-haired one would probably get along pretty well. And, seeing as how I don't really care, I'll just take the blonde one."

Mikey looked back at Hannah to see what she thought of being paired up with Wonder Woman. She too looked as though she didn't really care.

"Okay," Superman concluded, "So, I suppose that I'll go get Hawkgirl. Now, once we split you all up, you will probably not see each other until that day that we are absolutely sure that you all serve no threat. So, I suggest that you say your goodbyes now." He turned and walked out of the room, the massive door closing behind him.

All of the security drones seemed to slowly seep back into the walls of the room. The group of friends turned to each other, absolutely desperate for closure. They spent about fifteen minutes sharing goodbyes, old memories, and last words of hope.

Superman came back in the room, closely followed by Hawkgirl. "Okay," he kicked off, "go ahead and get with your hero, the sooner that we start this the better."

The group of friends split up and got with their heroes. Superman and Jonathon turned to the door as it opened. The pair walked out, and each other couple followed in a formal line.

It seemed as though, as soon as they got into the hallway they were all immediately being split in different directions. They craned their necks to get a last look at their friends for 'who knew how long.' They all stayed quiet and just walked beside their assigned hero, in complete silence.


	4. Chapter 4: Split

"So…" Mikey wasn't entirely sure what to say to fill in the awkward silence. "How long do you think that this will take?"

"Well," Batman started to answer, "I can't really say for sure, but if I were to guess, I would say months, easily."

"Wow, that long being away from home, and not seeing my friends? That's insane. I thought that this was just going to be a couple weeks of deep interrogation."

"Well, that's what we did to the last one, and he went rogue, so we're going for a more hands on approach with you."

"Last one? What do you mean by that? Did somebody come before us?"

"As if you don't know. He used the same watch devises as you, and had the same story. We made the mistake of trusting him from the start, and he turned on us and ran off with some of the most powerful tools in this dimension. You wouldn't know anything about this, would you?"

Mikey thought for a moment. "No, I don't think so. The only other person that we know that has that technology is the person that gave it to us, and I can't really see him doing that."

"What was his name?" Asked Batman, as they rounded another corner.

"He goes by the name 'The Doctor,' and I'd say he's not about to change that."

"Well, the one that came here called himself 'Greyscale.' He never explained why, do you know him?"

Mikey pondered the name, turning it over in his head. "No, I don't think I've ever met him."

"Well, somehow he knew that you all were coming, and he told us that. That's exactly why we had all of those extra security measures set forth. When he told us of you, he said that you were to be trusted, but he told us that at a time that we trusted him. When he proved himself untrustworthy, we also kind of lost our trust in you all as well."

"I understand your lack of trust, and it clearly has it's reasoning, but you really can trust us."

Batman stopped walking when they got to a door. He looked at Mikey and thought for a second. Batman almost looked sad, as if he had lost something very dear to him.

"I'm sorry." Batman turned to the door and opened it. "But, although you haven't deserved our mistrust, that Greyscale fellow is the cause for you to have to earn our trust. All of that aside, this will be your room."

He stepped aside to reveal an average sized room. It had a comfortable looking bunk in the corner with two windows on the opposite wall looking off into space. Next to the door were two baskets, on for trash and the other for laundry. On the wall to the left was a large, sliding door that led to a small closet. On the right wall was a thin door that appeared to lead to a bathroom. The only other things in the room were the grey bedding and whatever was in the closet and the bathroom.

"Now," Batman said, turning to leave, "why don't you go ahead and get changed out of those dress clothes? There should be a range of clean clothes in that closet including pajamas, robes and training clothes. The bathroom should be stocked with plenty of necessities to last you. We do not provide room cleaning here, so you'll have to take care of yourself. Let me know if you need anything in the morning. I don't want you to be leaving this room for the next couple weeks without me. Be ready for some training in the morning seeing as how I don't have any plans all day, that's probably what we'll end up using it for." He glanced over his shoulder to see if Mikey was listening. "Get a good nights sleep."

Batman walked out and the door slid shut behind him, his cape flourishing as he left.

Mikey sat on his bunk and looked up at the ceiling in thought.

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Hannah and Wonder Woman walked in silence through the hallways.

Wonder Woman finally decided to talk first saying, "I like your dress. It looks nice on you." She smiled at Hannah.

"Um… Thanks. I like your-" Hannah trailed off looking at Wonder Woman's outfit. "… Tiara?"

Wonder Woman laughed and patted Hannah on the shoulder. "You're alright."

"Thanks…" She trailed off and tried to avoid eye contact.

"You okay?" They stopped walking and Wonder Woman moved around to face Hannah. "Look, I know it's hard to be separated from your friends, but you have to understand that-"

"It's not that." Hannah cut in. "I get why you feel the need to do this. There's no reason that you should trust us, and I get that. But it's not just being away from my friends for an unspecified length of time. It's my family too. It's the not being able to go home this whole time and see my family."

Wonder Woman stood almost at a loss for comfort. "Look, I'm not that great at this whole, 'sweet talk' thing, especially seeing as how I was raised to be a great warrior. I also didn't really have the best relationship with my mom, so I can't sympathize there. But listen, I bet you this time will go by like nothing, and I promise you that you are not a prisoner here, and I don't intend to treat you like one."

Hannah looked up to look into Wonder Woman's eyes. "Thanks Wonder Woman."

"Tell you what, call me Diana. Okay?"

Hannah chuckled a bit. "Okay."

"Now, let's get to your room." They took off down the hallway, both feeling a lot better. As their voices became more distant, they too became more playful and cheery.

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"So this is my room?" Jonathon asked, looking around trying to take his new life in.

"Yup, for the next, well, I guess that depends." Superman said, smiling at Jonathon's curiosity.

"Okay. Why are there cameras?" He asked, looking up at two opposing corners.

"It's just a precaution. Don't take it personal, all of your friend's rooms have them too."

"You do seem rather prepared for our arrival. Why is that?"

"Well, like I said, Greyscale told us that you four would come. And, even though he had lost our trust, that was no real reason for us to just ignore this piece of possibility."

"Yeah… I wonder who Greyscale is." Jonathon fell back onto his bunk making a firm 'thump.' Then he sat back up "Do you remember what he looked like?"

"Well… I mean, he had Normal length hair, brown. Glasses. Oh, he could change his hair blonde by yelling really loud."

"What? What do you mean, 'by yelling really loud.' That doesn't even make sense!"

"I know. It was weird."

"Well, do you have any footage of him?"

Superman shook his head. "No, he destroyed all the files we had, not just on him, but on everything. Let me tell you, that was a mess to clean up."

"Wow, that seems a bit overkill."

"Oh, he also had five watches all the way up his arm. Four of them looked identical to yours, but the fifth was a dark green one."

"Huh, I wonder what that one was."

"Well, either way, the way it's looking is that we're gonna start training tomorrow, so go ahead and get your rest tonight."

"Okay. Hey, I want to thank you so much for letting me train with you, because in my dimension, you were my biggest hero. Ever since I was a kid I looked up to you."

"I'm glad to hear it." Superman smiled and walked over to rub Jonathon on the head. "But just so you know, you still are a kid to me." He turned to walk out, waving his hand back over his shoulder. "See you in the morning kid."

The door closed behind him. Jonathon lay back down on his bunk. He unbuttoned his blue dress shirt that he was wearing to reveal his superman t-shirt that he had on underneath. As Jonathon saw this he chuckled a bit to himself and laid in silence.

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Hawkgirl sighed and glared out of the corner of her eyes at Mariah. They were walking down the hallway together to get to Mariah's room.

"What's your problem?" Mariah shot at Hawkgirl.

Hawkgirl stopped walking in front of Mariah. She whipped around and held her mace in Mariah's face looking outraged. Mariah took a step back in shock. "Look, nobody wants you here. You better believe that includes me. So, I suggest that you just listen to what I tell you, and do as I say."

"Hey," Mariah stepped forward, pushing the mace to the side, "I don't want to be here. I didn't wake up this morning and say, 'hey, I think that I will go to another dimension and screw up some eagle-winged freak's life today!' I don't know how long I'm gonna be stuck here, but I want to be clear that I don't want to put up with your crap the whole time."

They both stared into each other's eyes, neither of them budging an inch. A smile crept across Hawkgirl's face and she began laughing, throwing her head back.

"What's up with you?" Mariah asked sounding almost disgusted.

Hawkgirl continued to laugh and she threw one of her arms into the air. She brought it down on Mariah's shoulder and calmed her laughter. "Man, I like you. You've got spunk kid. We haven't had someone like you her since… Well, me!"

Mariah smiled a bit, relaxing as she did. "Well, I'm glad that we can get along."

"Of course we will, you didn't think that I was really mad at you did you?" Mariah rolled her eyes at this. "Oh come on, you should be able to understand. People show their true character under intense pressure. Although, I admit, if you had abided to my authority, I probably would have kept up the act for who knows how long. You know, just for the sake of convenience."

They began to walk on again, eventually reaching an elevator door. "I hope you don't mind," Hawkgirl said, "but I prefer to bunk on another level, and would like you to stay on the same floor as me."

The elevator door opened and they both walked in. "So," Hawkgirl started, "either of those boys I saw catch your fancy."

Mariah smiled at Hawkgirl as the elevator door closed behind them.


End file.
